phew

Even free kicks bend like the ball is scared of disappointing him. First-time finishes look pre-planned. Through balls cut past defensive lines like an arrow. 

His passing is even better because he does not pass unless he has decided, mathematically, that you deserve the ball. And when he does, it lands exactly where he meant it to. Commentators are always like, “That is frightening precision,” and the camera cuts to Dex looking completely dead behind the eyes.

So no, he does not just kick a football. He selects a target and executes.

The weirdest part to most people, is that Dex doesn’t even celebrate his goals.

Not because he is humble. But because what is he celebrating for?

It’s his job.

He scores, turns around, and walks back to the halfway line like he just filed paperwork. Everyone else is screaming. The stadium is shaking. His teammates are chasing him, trying to jump on his back and get him to celebrate, and Dex is just standing there, blank-faced, waiting for the match to restart.

Commentators hate it. Fans are obsessed with it. The club media team wants to die.

Because how are they supposed to market this man?

“Here is our star striker, Benjamin Poindexter. He has scored twenty-six goals this season and smiles once every three months.”

The club is exhausted.

They have tried everything: Media coaching, charity shoots with children, behind-the-scenes videos where he is supposed to seem approachable. It never works. He stands there and says the most mundane things in the most unsettling tone anyone has ever heard.

What is the club supposed to say?

“Our striker is a psychopath but at least he scores goals????”

C’mon.

And then the press conference incident happens.

Some journalist asks, “Dex, do you think people overstate your finishing ability because the team is built around giving you so many chances?”

And Dex just stares.

He should’ve said something flattering about his team and his manager, something like, “credit to the lads” or “our coaching staff is wonderful”

But no. Flat-faced, he says, “No. I think if your job is watching football and that’s what you saw, you should be embarrassed.”

The whole room goes silent.

It’s not even the rudest thing a footballer has ever said, because footballers say insane things all the time. It’s because Dex says it like he’s already decided where the journalist would be buried after he kills him.

So the club panics and assigns him to you.

You, the PR manager everyone loves. You, who can charm the press, calm agents down, make a scandal sound like a “miscommunication,” and somehow convince angry sponsors that Dex is “passionate” and “misunderstood” and “just very committed to the game.”

And Dex needs you. Badly.

After your first meeting, you start by printing off a list of safe answers: 

“We take every game as it comes.”

“The boys worked hard.”

“I’m grateful for the support.”

“The manager has a plan and we trust it.”

“I don’t listen to outside noise.”

You even add notes:

Smile here.

Mention the team.

Do not stare for more than three seconds.

Do not correct the journalist unless I say you can.

Dex takes it way too seriously.

He practices in the mirror after training, still in his club tracksuit, hair damp from the shower, face empty, saying, “I’m proud of the boys,” like the boys are being held hostage off-camera.

Then the next press conference happens.

Reporter says, “Dex, how do you feel the team handled the pressure today?”

Dex leans into the microphone, dead-eyed and emotionless.  “The boys worked hard.”

And you think, okay. Fine. He’s trying.

Reporter: “You scored twice today. Do you feel like you’re in the best form of your career?”

Dex glances at you, and you give him a tiny nod.

“We take every game as it comes.”

Okay. Robotic, but it’s okay, I guess.

Reporter: “There’s a lot of talk about the title race. Do you listen to outside noise?”

Dex pauses, as if trying to remember the sheet of paper you gave him. “I don’t listen to outside noise.”

See, technically, he’s doing it right. The answers are safe and no one can accuse him of being rude.

But he’s saying it like an assassin reading an insulting birthday card. 

Then a journalist asks, “You seem calmer with the media lately. Has something changed?”

Dex looks directly at you. Directly. In front of everyone. And says, “I’ve been taught to behave.”

You facepalm so hard you nearly concuss yourself.

The journalists start typing like wolves.

Dex looks pleased because he thinks he nailed it.

So after that, you stop trusting the list and start practicing with him properly, in person. You sit across from him with your notebook while he sits there like a cat being taught not to scratch the scratching post.

“No, Dex. Less… murder-y.”

He tries again.

“No. I— why does that sound like more of a threat? Can you say it normally?”

He blinks. “That was normal.”

“It’s not.”

He tries again.

You teach him where to pause, when to smile, how long eye contact can last before it becomes a problem. How to say “credit to the team” without making it sound like the team owes him money.

You even physically stop him from answering “what went wrong in the first half?” with “our midfield kept making bad fucking decisions.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. But he cannot say that into six microphones.

After a while, Dex gets obsessed with you because you’re nice to him.

You’re not even fake-nice or club-mandated nice. You talk to him like he’s a person. Like his brain is strange, yes, but not broken beyond understanding.

One day, a reporter asks about his parents.

Dex freezes, because he has never been briefed on this yet. What the hell was he supposed to say?

Before Dex can answer, your voice cuts in, sweet as sugar.

“You don’t have to answer that.”

Oh?

You even smile at the reporter, “We’re keeping questions focused on the match today, thank you.”

You didn’t even flinch. You just stepped in front of the question like it was nothing.

So Dex fixates on you.

How could he not?

He watches your mouth when you explain things. He copies your tone. He stands perfectly still when you fix his collar before interviews.

You chuckle, “Relax.”

And his body listens to your command. 

It becomes a problem. Especially when that stupid midfielder asks you out.

And he’s not even a good midfielder! Why the club even signed him is beyond Dex’s understanding.

Like, that’s the part that really makes Dex feel insane. The guy kills every counterattack by taking one extra touch. He sees a perfect run and passes backwards. He overhits simple balls. He cannot cross to save his life. Last game, he sent one so badly behind Dex that Dex had to stop in the box, turn around, and look at him like he was deciding whether murder was worth the red card.

That guy gets to go out with you?

Well. You keep saying it’s not a date. You say it’s just friendly drinks because you work with all of them and you are friends with all of them.

But Dex thinks you’re amazing. And he knows his teammate thinks that too, that creep. He knows he has a crush on you.

Ugh.

Dex feels sick.

So he follows you. Secretly, obviously. He tells himself it’s for safety reasons, which is fascinating because you are literally just sitting in a bar, laughing politely over a mojito, while Dex stands across the street in a hoodie, glaring through the window like a widowed mafia wife.

And then the midfielder kisses you goodnight. Not sweetly, and not in the way Dex has imagined kissing you, careful and shaking and half-ruined by wanting you so badly.

The idiot leans in like he’s earned it, and you push back almost immediately, startled and uncomfortable, because you thought this was friendly. You thought saying “not a date” had been clear enough.

And Dex remembers it forever.

Next match, he simply refuses to pass to him.

The midfielder makes run after run. Dex sees every single one. Of course he does. Dex sees everything. Dex could spot a gap in a backline during a thunderstorm with one eye closed. He could make that midfielder look brilliant if he wanted to.

He doesn’t want to.

The midfielder points. Dex ignores him.

The midfielder shouts. Dex turns the other way.

The midfielder is wide open in the box, practically begging for the easiest assist of Dex’s life, and Dex takes the shot from a worse angle and scores anyway.

The commentators call it confidence. The pundits call it hunger. The fans call it ice in his veins.

By the time the transfer window opens, Dex walks into the manager’s office and says, “He doesn’t fit the system,” talking about the midfielder, of course. 

And what are they going to do? Upset the league’s most accurate finisher? Their star striker? The man who scored four goals in two games this week and made every single keeper look stupid?

Bye bye, stupid midfielder. Sold to a second-tier club for pennies. 

Anyway.

With the only competition removed Dex starts making his moves.

He brings you coffee with your order memorised. He asks if you have eaten, like, every twenty minutes. He starts giving better interviews only when you are in the room, because he’s not really speaking to the press anymore.

He’s performing being good for you.

Then, after one press conference where he actually sounds almost charming, the club management praises him for finally learning how to handle the media.

Dex barely reacts.

He just waits until you are walking beside him in the corridor, away from the cameras and staff, then leans close enough that his shoulder touches yours.

“Did I do good?”

Oh. My. God. 

Pathetic star striker. Six-foot-something nightmare of a man who can ruin an entire back line’s confidence forever, make world-class defenders second-guess every step, send keepers home questioning their career choices, and he’s still standing in front of his PR manager with those hazel eyes because if you don’t tell him he did good, he might actually die.

And he looks so earnest about it!! So hungry for it!! 

It’s as if  all the goals, all the chants, all the headlines mean nothing compared to you looking up at him and saying, “Yes, Dex. You did so well.”

His face changes. His shoulders drop. His eyes flick to your lips and stay there.

And sure, maybe you should step back.

No. Actually. Obviously, you should step back. He’s the club’s star striker. You are his PR manager. This is a bad idea. A terrible idea. A “you should know better” idea.

But then he says, almost embarrassed, “I like when you say it.”

And that’s it. You kiss him first, and you feel him freeze under your hands, all that frightening control going useless the second your mouth touches his.

Then he kisses you back like he has been waiting through every practice interview, every press conference, every time you fixed his collar and told him to breathe.

It’s not casual. It’s not smooth. It’s very Dex.

So of course it feels a little insane.

His hand finds your waist carefully at first. And then you make this tiny sound against his mouth, and when you don’t pull away, he presses harder, and suddenly the league’s most clinical finisher is backing you against the corridor wall like this is the only target he has ever been afraid to miss.

You whisper between kisses, “This is a bad idea.”

Dex kisses the edge of your jaw. “Yeah?”

“We work together,” you point out 

He kisses you again, slower this time. “And that’s bad?” He asks, genuinely confused. 

“It is,” you breathe, even though your hands are already in his hair. “Starting a relationship in the workplace is always bad.”

Dex pulls back just enough to look at you.

His mouth is wet, eyes are dark. He almost laughs in your face. “What are they gonna do, fire me?”

No, actually, they won’t.

Dex knows how valuable he is.

What are they going to do? Sack the man carrying them through a title race? Bench the striker who treats goalkeepers like training cones? Fine him for kissing the PR manager when he is the only reason half their sponsors are still smiling?

Ha! Of course not!

They are going to sigh and panic and schedule another meeting with HR. And Dex is going to score anyway.

So when he drags you into the empty locker room after the next match, you know you should really stop him.

You don’t.

Because he scored twice and still came off the pitch looking for you before anyone else. Because he stood under the floodlights with the whole stadium chanting his name and didn’t smile once until he saw you waiting near the tunnel.

The second the door shuts behind you, he is on you.

His hands are at your waist, your back, your hips, like he is trying to convince himself you’re real. He kisses you against the lockers with all that bottled-up focus, metal rattling behind you. 

You tell him, “You were brilliant today.”

And Dex makes this ruined sound against your mouth.

You say it again, because now you know exactly what it does to him. “So good, Dex.”

His head drops to your shoulder as you both desperately and frantically take every piece of clothing off.

The lockers rattle again.

And yes, this is reckless. Yes, anyone could walk in. Yes, later you will have to fix your lipstick in the mirror while Dex stands behind you looking smug and so completely in love and the club owner has to pretend like he doesn’t know what’s going on. 

But in the moment, all you can think about is him pressing you against cold metal, kissing you like winning meant nothing until he got to come back here and be with you.

Then the next week, he scores again.

And for once, he doesn’t just walk back to the halfway line.

For once, Dex celebrates.

The stadium goes wild. His teammates barely know what to do when Dex scores, turns, and points straight at you.

Like what else would he celebrate for?

The goal is his job.

You are the reward.

—end. 

Note: Yes yes, I know I will eventually do a pro baseball Dex AU because that is literally his sport, but I have no idea how baseball works. I do know football, though. Also it’s the World Cup, so this is topical!!! Leave me alone 🫠🫠🫠I also lowkey am thinking about turning this into like my full-length Bucky football au fic. Thoughts?

This is also inspired by this variant cover of the upcoming Daredevil #4 by Geoff Shaw:

Girlfriend was what people called the woman they brought to weddings. Girlfriend was dinner reservations and spare hoodies and lazy Sunday mornings. Girlfriend was small enough to fit into people’s mouths without scaring them.

You were not small. You were not mild.

You were the hand around the back of his neck when he was one bad second from a bad decision. You were not his girlfriend like a cute title. You were his alibi, his home, his open wound, his last nerve.

You were his collar, though you only called yourself that when you wanted to watch him lose focus for you.

And Dex wasn’t your boyfriend in any ordinary way either.

He wasn’t all about flowers and movie dates, though he had brought you flowers once and then spent thirty-seven minutes rearranging them in a vase because he decided the florist had done a lazy job and nothing could ever possibly be good enough for his girl. He wasn’t normal morning kisses, though he kissed you every morning like he had to prove you were still his. He wasn’t good at easy affection, except when he was, and then it was almost worse, because his gentleness always had teeth around it.

So yeah, boyfriend and girlfriend sounded a bit too tame for what you were to each other, but you’ve been together for six months.

Six months was not a long time. 

Six months was nothing.

Six months was barely a “serious” relationship to normal people. Six months in a relationship was still pretending you didn’t notice each other’s flaws. Six months was still acting like you had boundaries, hobbies, independent lives, and a reasonable amount of emotional distance in case of a breakup.

You and Dex had skipped all of that.

Dex moved in officially by month three, which was funny, because unofficially he had moved in after month two. First it was a spare shirt, then a toothbrush, then a drawer, then three drawers. Then, he started hiding his knives under your bed, his gun taped beneath your kitchen table, his boots by your door, his shampoo in your shower, his body in your bed every single night like he would rather peel off his own skin than sleep somewhere you were not.

By the time he actually started paying bills (two weeks of staying around), it felt less like a milestone and more like paperwork catching up to the fact that he obviously lived there.

He belonged there. He belonged to you.

And fuck, you liked it.

You liked that he was insane about you. You liked that he wanted to know where you were, who you were with, how long you would be gone, whether you had eaten, whether anyone had looked at you wrong, whether anyone had said your name in a way he needed to correct. You liked the way his devotion took all the space out the room. You liked that loving Dex felt less like dating and more like being worshipped.

It was important to understand that you weren’t just the poor, helpless, naive girl who knew nothing better of his obsession. Please. You were a supersoldier with a body count. You could have snapped his wrist the first time he got too possessive. You could have kicked him out the first time he started acting like your apartment was his if you didn’t want it.

Instead, you bought his favourite coffee and cleared space in your wardrobe. Instead, you let him fold himself into every corner of your life. Instead, when you found the tracker he inserted in your bracelet, you didn’t throw it at his head.

You just held it up between two fingers and said, “Dex.”

He had gone completely still. He didn’t look guilty. Instead like a dog caught with blood on its mouth, waiting to see if you were going to send him away.

You should have been furious. Maybe part of you was. But another part of you, the part that had been made in laboratories and freezers, made to go on missions by Hydra where nobody came back for you, looked at that tiny little tracker and thought: Aw. He wants to find me.

Because you know Dex didn’t want to use you. You weren’t an asset. 

He just wanted to find you. To know where you were. 

So you sighed, handed the bracelet back, and said, “can you at least make sure it’s waterproof?”

Dex looked at you like you had just handed him your heart and a loaded gun and told him to be careful with both.

After that, after confirming that the tracking chip was indeed waterproof (and shatterproof), the bracelet stayed on at all times.

Of course, you had a tracker on him, too. You put it in one of his knife holsters that he never left home without. 

It was probably, by any normal metric to any normal couple, unhealthy. But to you, it was sweet. 

And it worked because neither of you had to translate the ugly parts. Dex didn’t have to pretend he was less intense. You didn’t have to pretend you wanted gentle, normal, polite love. He wanted to crawl under your skin and live there. You would let him if you could.

You had gotten together on a mission, because Mr. Charles paired you and Dex together. You were a close combat specialist with terrible aim, so naturally, he became your partner. You had your similarities, of course. You both were weapons who had learned to talk back. You were both very, very good at making people disappear.

You were supposed to work together.

Instead, Dex watched you rip a door off its hinges with one hand and fell a little bit in love. You watched him put a bullet through three moving targets with one ricochet and thought, Oh, he’s dreamy.

By the end of the mission, he was bending you over every flat surface he could find. 

When you returned from that months-long mission, he was in your apartment.

Now it was his apartment, too, legally.

And today, you were late in coming home.

Not late-late. Not missing. Not in danger, according to the little dot on his phone that he had refreshed seven times in the last ten minutes.

You had texted him and said “the line in the DMV was way longer than I expected. Going to be 15 minutes late :(“

Which was fine. It was fine. You had let him know. You were doing exactly what you’d promised: communicating every tiny thing before his mind could turn it into a crime scene. Now, though, according to the app, you were four blocks away. 

Then three and a half.

Then the dot stopped.

Dex stared at the screen anxiously.

He zoomed in and realised it was your favourite Chinese place. 

You were probably picking up takeout. You had texted him earlier asking if he wanted the usual, and he had stared at the message for nearly a full minute because the usual made this warm and needy feeling curl warmly in his chest.

The usual meant you knew him. The usual meant he had routines with you. The usual meant he wasn’t temporary.

Still, you had stopped moving there for five minutes. Then ten minutes.

Dex refreshed the app.

You still haven’t moved.

He refreshed again.

You still haven’t moved.

His thumb hovered over your name in the contacts. 

He could call. He wanted to call. He wanted to hear your voice, wanted to ask who was near you, wanted to tell you to come home now, wanted to go to you himself and remove every variable between your body and his.

He didn’t. Because you had told him, very gently, very lovingly, that if he interrupted one more meeting by appearing silently behind you with a gun, someone was going to report the incident. And if that report escalates into legal matters, Charles was probably going to assign you both into different missions next time. 

So Dex stayed on the couch.

He had a gun within reach, a knife in his thigh holster, phone in his hand. His eyes were still locked on the glowing little proof that you were still there, still coming back to him.

Because knowing you were safe was not enough. Knowing where you were was not enough. Dex wouldn’t relax until he heard your key in the door, until he heard your voice saying his name.

He had become addicted to the proof of you. He became obsessed with your shoes next to his by the entrance. Your jacket over his, your mug in the dishwasher. Your blood on his sleeves. Your laugh in his lips. Your body under his at night, comfortable and alive and his, his, his in the only way that mattered.

He refreshed the tracker again.

You were moving now.

Good. Good.

He exhaled through his nose and looked toward the door like he could summon you by way of wanting hard enough.

Then, from the corner of his eyes in the living room, he could see through the doorframe that the bedroom window was now half open.

Dex froze.

Huh. 

The window slid higher, and this time, he could hear hard breathing in the dark.

And not in the familiar, tired little sigh you made when you came home after a long day. This was someone else. 

Besides, you had keys. Why would you go through the window?

Dex looked down at his phone. Your location blinked back at him. You were still two blocks away.

You were enough that his chest had already started relaxing. Not close enough to be the person forcing their way into your bedroom.

He put the phone down without locking it and went into the bedroom.

The gun was in his hand before the intruder’s first boot hit the floor.

A body dragged itself through the window, broad shoulders catching on the sill, one hand gripping the frame, hard enough to make the wood creak. Whoever it was landed on one knee with a rough sound of pain.

Blood painted the floor before Dex ever saw his face.

And there was a lot of blood.

The man stayed hunched for a second, one hand pressed hard to his side, breathing like the air had teeth. He had dark tactical gear, long hair half-fallen into his face. Then he saw a metal hand catching the city light.

Oh, fuck off. 

Bucky Barnes looked up from the floor of the bedroom, pale and bleeding and still somehow arrogant enough to look annoyed by the gun pointed at his head.

Of course, of all the people in the world who could crawl bleeding through your window, it had to be the ex, who you broke up on decent terms with, who you were still friends with. Of course it was the ex who rescued you from your cryo chamber in Siberia. Of course it was your ex who you called for work emergencies, because those emergencies were usually Hydra-related ones. Of course it was your ex who was a supersoldier, like you. 

There were a lot of things Dex had imagined saying to him. Most of them involved you not finding the body.

Instead, Dex forced himself to smile and clicked the safety off. “Rough night?”

Bucky blinked once, unimpressed.

“Oh,” he rasped, as if he was surprised he was here. “You.”

Dex forced himself to smile. “Me.”

Bucky’s eyes moved past him, taking in the room in detail for someone who was supposedly bleeding. He could see a second cologne on the dresser, an extra cabinet that wasn’t there before, two pairs of pyjamas folded nearly on top of the duvet.

Then Bucky looked back at him. “You’re the new boyfriend, right?”

Dex tilted his head. “You’re the trespassing ex-boyfriend.”

As if he had never trespassed before. 

“Sorry.” Bucky made a sound that might have been a laugh if his ribs were not actively leaking. “I was aiming for charming entrance.”

“You missed.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Dex stepped closer, gun steady. “You want to tell me why you’re bleeding in my bedroom?”

Bucky’s eyes lifted at that.

Huh. 

Dex could immediately see it in his eyes. Bucky clearly felt petty, exhausted, and jealous in a way he clearly hated himself for being.

“Yours?’” He echoed.

Dex’s finger shifted lightly against the trigger. “Our bedroom.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched as he scoffed. “That was quick.”

Dex almost shot him for the tone alone.

But even when injured, Bucky was fast. His metal hand knocked the gun aside. Dex was already too close for it to matter. He drove his fist into Bucky’s side, exactly where the blood was coming from.

Bucky’s breath snapped out of him. “Cheap,” Bucky grunted.

Dex leaned in, eyes bright. “Expect me to fight fair, old man?”

Bucky caught him by the shoulder and turned, driving him into the wardrobe hard enough to crack the door. Dex hit wood, bounced off it, and came back smiling with blood on his lip.

Dex lunged, driving Bucky back to the table. The mirror rattled.

A bottle of your perfume tipped over and shattered against the floorboards, spilling glass and rose scent into the blood-stale air.

Bucky caught his next hit badly. He was too slow on one side, too stiff on the other, blood slick under his fingers where he was still trying to keep pressure on his ribs. Dex slammed into him anyway, agitating the liquid on the floor until the scent rose.

And Bucky hated, genuinely hated, how fast that smell got under his skin.

For half a second, he was not in your bedroom with a gunshot wound and your new boyfriend trying to rearrange his face.

He was in a safehouse, a bathroom mirror fogged after a shower. Your towel abandoned over the sink. Your shoulder brushing his in a safehouse hallway because neither of you had ever been good at giving each other space. Your perfume on the collar of his shirt after you stole it and gave it back. Your neck against his mouth before everything went sour. Your laugh in the dark. Your hand on his wrist. Your voice saying his name when you still said it like it belonged to you.

Bucky missed you. The realization hit him, and it was almost worse than the bullet.

Bucky didn't miss the idea of you. He missed you. Your smile, your face, the smell of you in the room like a ghost that had not asked permission to haunt him.

Dex saw that tiny, stupid pause. The way Bucky’s eyes dropped for one second too long to the broken glass. The way his jaw tightened like he had just swallowed something sharp.

Dex’s face went cold.

“Oh,” he said softly. “That hurt.”

Bucky’s eyes snapped back to him. “Shut up.”

Dex smiled. “No.”

Bucky shoved him back, harder this time, using more strength than he should have. Dex hit the wardrobe, the wood splitting behind his shoulder, but he came off it laughing under his breath, blood bright on his lip and jealousy alive in every line of his body.

“You miss her.”

Bucky’s expression shut down.

Dex stepped closer. “You do. That’s funny.”

“Nothing about you is funny.”

“No?” Dex tilted his head, eyes flicking over him. “You crawled through her window bleeding, looked around my bedroom, smelled her perfume, and forgot how to breathe. Seems pretty hilarious to me.”

Bucky swung.

Dex ducked under it and drove his fist into Bucky’s side.

Bucky’s knees dipped.

The pain tore a raw sound out of him before he could stop it.

Dex moved in close, almost gentle in the way a knife could be gentle if it liked where it landed.

“You should’ve gone to a hospital.”

Bucky grabbed him by the shirt. “Her place was closer.”

Dex’s smile vanished.

“Our place,” Dex scowled under his breath. The correction was quiet enough that it shouldn't have hit as hard as it did, but Bucky’s eyes lifted to him anyway. Blood was leaking between his fingers now, dark and slick against the black of his tactical gear, dripping steadily onto the floorboards Dex had polished two weekends ago. You smiled at him and helped, because you said you liked spending normal, domestic afternoons with him between missions. Dex remembered the way you had smiled at him from your knees with a rag in your hand, wearing one of his shirts, and the memory made the blood on the floor feel wrong.

Bucky’s mouth curled. “Didn’t realize she was taking in strays now.”

Dex stared at him for one flat second. Then he smiled, and it wasn’t a smile you would have liked. “Funny, coming from you.”

It shouldn’t have pleased him, seeing Bucky like this. But really?

This was the man Dex had been threatened by in his own head for months? This was the ex-boyfriend with the history, the metal arm, the kind of name that came attached to wars and redacted files and the unreadable look you got whenever Siberia came up? 

He was weak, bleeding, breaking into your room because he had nowhere better to be.

Still, Dex knew that wasn't a fair assessment. Bucky was only manageable because he was injured. If he were whole, if his ribs were not torn open and one side of his body was not stiff with blood loss, this fight would go in favour of Dex’s side. Not here, at least. 

Close quarters were made for men like Barnes, men built like battering rams, men who could crush bone with one hand and keep walking. Dex was better from a distance. Give him a bullet, a blade, a coin, a shard of mirror glass, anything he could send across a room, and he would put Bucky down before the man could say your name.

But Bucky was here, bleeding in your bedroom, and Dex had never needed fair to feel righteous.

He moved again, driving his fist into Bucky’s wounded side with deliberate cruelty. Bucky’s breath broke out of him in a brutal, unwilling sound, his body folding toward the impact before his pride could catch up. Dex grabbed the front of his vest and shoved him back into the dresser now that he was getting weaker and weaker. The wood cracked against the wall, your little tray of rings and hair ties skittering over the surface. Bucky’s metal hand shot out and slammed into the dresser edge for balance, and the wood splintered under his palm.

There. There he was. Even hurt, even half-dead and leaking blood all over your nice floor, Bucky was still strong enough to split furniture by accident. Dex felt the danger, but jealousy made him step closer instead of away. Bucky swung with his human hand, and caught Dex across the mouth hard enough to snap his head sideways. Blood bloomed over Dex’s tongue. The room went bright for a second, white at the edges, and then he laughed under his breath because Bucky had finally hit him like he meant it.

Bucky hated that laugh. Bucky’s eyes narrowed, though his face flattened like he could turn himself into a wall if he just refused to feel enough things. It didn’t work. 

Dex had seen Bucky look at the broken glass. He had seen that humiliating pause, the grief flickering across his face before he wiped it. He missed you, and Dex hated him for it. 

So Bucky smiled back, faint and mean through the pain. “She still get fussy about the sock placement in her wardrobe?”

It wasn’t an innocent question. Nothing in Bucky’s face was innocent. He knew exactly what he was doing, knew that mentioning an intimate detail would get under Dex’s skin faster than any punch. He was ragebaiting him and bitter enough to make himself cruel just to stop feeling pathetic. Dex knew that too, and it didn’t help.

He approached him in two steps. Bucky tried to brace, but Dex dipped under the metal arm and slammed his elbow into the wound again, not hard enough to end the fight, just hard enough to make Bucky’s knees soften. 

Bucky grunted and caught Dex by the shoulder, throwing him sideways with enough force to send him into the ground. The door cracked behind his back. Hangers clattered down around his head, your dress slipping off one of them and brushing his arm as it fell. Dex saw Bucky’s eyes flick to it for one second too long.

Dex came off the floor with his knife halfway out before he had fully decided to draw it. Bucky’s metal hand caught his wrist mid-motion, fingers closing like a vice. Pain flashed bright up Dex’s arm, sharp enough that his fingers twitched around the hilt, but he refused to flinch. He pushed into it instead, smiling with blood on his teeth, watching Bucky watch him. For one long second, Bucky looked at the knife, then at Dex’s face, and thought…

Oh.

For that second, Bucky genuinely thought Dex was going to kill him.

Not threaten him or play jealous boyfriend in the bedroom of a woman they had both loved in violently different ways. He thought Dex was going to kill him. Put the knife and leave him bleeding out beside your dresser before you got home with takeout in a plastic bag. 

Bucky’s fingers tightened around Dex’s wrist, not out of confidence this time but calculation. He was deciding whether he had enough strength left to stop him. He was deciding whether you would forgive either of them for what happened next.

Dex saw the thought cross his face and smiled wider.

Bucky, because apparently pain had made him stupid, leaned into it. “Careful,” he rasped. “She might not like finding me dead in her bedroom.”

That was enough to make him falter. 

Dex saw the scenario too clearly: you walking in, your face changing when you saw Bucky on the floor and Dex standing over him with the knife. You rarely cried, and it was part of what made it unbearable when you did. But if he killed Bucky, you would, and Dex would rather stab himself a dozen times than be the reason you cried. 

You cared about Bucky. Dex didn’t understand it, not really, but you had reassured him it was platonic now, you had said it with your hands on his face with soothing shushes, as if jealousy was a wound you could press your palms over until it stopped bleeding. Platonic. As if that word meant anything when Bucky still came to your window when the world went wrong. Dex hated him for it. Dex hated that some part of you would hurt if Barnes died here. More than that, he hated that it mattered enough to stop his hand.

His grip tightened until the knife trembled once.

“Our bedroom,” Dex said, and drove his forehead into Bucky’s face instead.

The impact cracked through both of them. Bucky staggered back, blood bright at one nostril now, and Dex used the opening to twist free. He went low, sweeping into Bucky’s bad side, viciously accurate. Bucky went down hard on one knee. The floorboards shook under him. Blood splattered out from beneath his hand when he caught himself, and the smell of iron rose thick enough to choke on.

Dex was on him immediately, one hand fisted in Bucky’s hair, yanking his head back just enough to make it insulting. Bucky’s metal hand came up, but Dex angled away from it, staying too close and too awkward, forcing Bucky to spend strength he didn’t have. 

The fight became ugly in the cramped space beside the bed. Bucky was stronger, but he was slow on the wounded side. Dex was weaker, but he was precise. 

Bucky, breathing hard now, bared his teeth. “She tell you about the scar under her ribs yet?”

Dex’s grip in his hair tightened so hard it had to hurt.

Bucky knew it was cheap. He knew he was saying it because he wanted Dex to lose control, because rage made people sloppy and Bucky needed Dex sloppy if he was going to survive. But the cruelty had teeth because it was true: Of course Dex knew about your scar, but there were parts of you Dex hadn't been there for. There were wounds on your body and in your history that had Bucky’s fingerprints around them, not because he caused them, but because he had been there when Dex had not. 

He slammed Bucky sideways into the vanity. The mirror cracked behind him in a thin, branching line, splitting Bucky’s reflection into several broken versions of the same infuriating face. Dex grabbed the front of his vest and hauled him close, mouth near his ear now, voice poisonous. “You’re making a mess.”

Bucky gave a breathless, humorless laugh. “You started it.”

It was a juvenile insult, but it got to him anyway.

Dex hit him again, with pure and ugly anger. Bucky went with it, one hand clamped over his wound, teeth gritted so hard he looked like he might bite through the pain. For one second, he didn't get back up. Dex stood over him, chest heaving, knife fully drawn now, the blade angled down and catching the dim city light from the open window.

Don’t.

The thought cut through Dex’s thoughts so abruptly it almost felt divine intervention. Don’t, don’t, don’t. You’re going to disappoint her.

Dex’s hand tightened around the knife until his knuckles ached. He could still do it. He could still put Bucky down before the bastard got another word out. But then what? You’d walk in, see the blood, see him, see exactly what he had chosen to do in your home, and Dex knew with horrible clarity that you wouldn’t look at him like he was protecting you.

You would look at him like he had hurt you.

His teeth clenched.

You think she’s going to forgive you if you do this?

Bucky looked up at him from the floor, and the smile finally thinned into something quieter.

Dex could see him thinking it again. He could see the exact moment Bucky wondered whether he had pushed too far, whether needling the new boyfriend had been funny right up until the new boyfriend turned out to be a psychopath with perfect aim and no audience to behave for. Bucky’s metal hand flexed against the floor. His human hand pressed harder to the wound. He was too hurt to spring properly, too proud to crawl, too stubborn to ask for help.

Dex, somehow finding mercy, crouched slowly, knife in hand, eyes never leaving his face.

“Were you followed?” he asked.

For a second, all the jealousy and violence had nowhere to go. Dex leaned in, the knife close enough now that Bucky could feel the idea of it against his throat. This was not just possessive anymore. This was practical. 

Bucky swallowed, throat shifting near the blade. “No.”

Dex’s stare didn’t move. “Try again.”

“I said no.” Bucky’s voice was rough, irritated. Pain had made him pale, and the mention of being followed had dragged the soldier back through the jealous ex. “What do you think I am, an amateur?”

“Tonight?” Dex said. “You sure as hell look like one”

“I was shot,” Bucky sneered.

“Everyone’s got problems.”

Bucky huffed a laugh despite himself, then immediately regretted it when the movement tugged at his side. His face tightened, and he looked away toward the window, toward the city beyond it. “Hydra cell uptown. I lost them before I came here.”

Dex tilted his chin. The jealousy didn’t vanish; it compressed, hardened, became the point of a needle. 

Hydra was near you. Hydra was close enough that Bucky Barnes, bleeding and stupid and still half in love, had decided your apartment was the nearest safehouse. Dex wanted to gut him for that. Dex wanted to check the hallway, the roofline, the stairwell, the little black dot on his phone that proved you were almost home. Dex wanted to drag Bucky into the bathroom, stitch him badly, and throw him out the window he came through. Mostly, Dex wanted you behind him where he could see every door between you and the world.

He pressed the knife a fraction closer, enough for Bucky to understand that he was being allowed to keep breathing as a courtesy.

“If you brought them to our door,” Dex said, voice tender with threat, “I’ll kill you before they get the chance to disappoint me.”

Bucky looked at him, breathing through his teeth. The old bitterness came back, but weaker now, frayed by blood loss and the dawning awareness that Dex wasn’t bluffing for the romance. “She know you talk like that?”

Dex smiled. “She actually likes it.”

Bucky’s muscles twitched again, and Dex took such vicious pleasure in it that it almost made up for the blood on the floor. 

He could see Bucky trying not to look around, trying not to notice the proof of Dex everywhere: the shirt over the chair, the spare boots by the wardrobe, the second cologne on the dresser, the life he had moved into. 

Then they both heard it.

The lock turned.

The entire room held its breath. Dex’s hand tightened once in Bucky’s vest before he let go just enough to stand, knife still hidden against his thigh. Bucky stayed on the floor, breathing hard, blood spreading beneath him, eyes flicking toward the bedroom door like even he hadn’t expected the timing to be this catastrophic. From the hallway came the rustle of plastic bags, the kick of the front door closing, the familiar little clink of your keys landing in the bowl.

“Baby?” you called, tired and completely unaware. “I’m home.”

Oh, shit.

Dex moved first, but only because Bucky couldn’t.

Dex straightened, his mouth split, his collar torn, one shoulder pressed strangely forward like he was trying to block your view of the wreckage with the sheer force of boyfriend entitlement. Bucky was still half on the floor, one hand clamped to his side, breathing hard through his nose, looking less like the Winter Soldier and more like a man who had picked the worst possible window in New York to bleed through.

“Stand up,” Dex hissed.

Bucky turned his head toward him. His face was damp with pain, and absolutely furious at being asked to perform under these conditions. “How?”

Dex’s eye twitched. He glanced at the door, then at Bucky, then at the dark red spreading beneath his knee like this was inconvenient. “I don’t care. Just don’t look like I did this.”

Bucky stared at him.

Dex scowled. “Fine. Don’t look like I did all of this.”

That, unfortunately, made Bucky almost laugh. It came out more like a wounded exhale, but it was enough to make Dex bare his teeth. They both knew what this looked like. It looked exactly like what it was: your psychopathic boyfriend and your assassin ex-boyfriend caught in the middle of a territorial bloodbath in your bedroom. There was no version of this where either of them came out looking reasonable. Even Bucky couldn’t look you in the eyes and say: I definitely did not start trying to piss your boyfriend off the second I saw him.

So they tried.

Dex grabbed Bucky under the arm and hauled him up with the stiff, resentful care of a man moving a bomb. Bucky bit down on whatever sound nearly escaped him, metal hand catching the dresser hard enough to make the wood creak. For a second, they were stuck like that: Dex bracing Bucky upright, Bucky leaning too much weight on Dex because he had no choice, both of them breathing through pain and rage and the horrible dawning knowledge that you were going to open that door and see everything.

“Stop bleeding,” Dex whispered.

Bucky’s eyes cut to him. “I’ll get right on that.”

Dex’s grip tightened enough that Bucky’s mouth flattened. “Do you want her mad?”

That shut him up.

Bucky wasn’t afraid of many things.He had been tortured, frozen, shot. But you were different. You had a way of going quiet when you were truly angry, a way of looking at a person like you were deciding whether to forgive them or break them in half. Bucky remembered that look. Dex knew that look. Both of them, stupidly in love with you in their own awful ways, understood at the same time that getting punched, stabbed, or shot would be easier than disappointing you.

So Bucky forced himself higher. Dex shoved the knife behind his own thigh like that helped, as if you didn’t know him well enough to clock a hidden weapon from the angle of his wrist alone. Bucky wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and only succeeded in smearing blood across his jaw. Dex looked at him with disgust, then glanced down at his own torn shirt and bleeding lip, and seemed to realize he had no moral advantage whatsoever.

From outside the bedroom, your footsteps slowed.

“Dex?” you called, closer now.

Dex’s entire body changed at your voice. His face gentled by force, badly, like a wolf trying to remember how poodles behaved. Bucky saw it happen and, despite the blood loss, looked vaguely surprised by how quickly Dex rearranged himself to be somewhat sweet for you. Then Bucky did the exact same thing, standing straighter, pushing his pain down, pretending he was not half a second from sliding down the dresser.

You paused outside the cracked bedroom door.

There was a thin line of light between the frame and the wall. Through it, Dex could see your shadow shift as you looked at the damage visible from the hallway. 

You didn’t come in immediately. That was worse, because it gave them both of time to become acutely aware of every sound in the room: Bucky’s uneven breathing, Dex’s blood dripping from his mouth, and the plastic rustle of takeout bags settling somewhere in the living room.

“Uh,” you said slowly. “Dex, who are you talking to?”

Dex opened his mouth.

Bucky gave him a warning look, which was insane, considering he was the one actively trespassing.

“Work,” Dex managed to croak.

Bucky closed his eyes. That was really the best he could do?

You opened the door.

For one long second, you just stood there with your coat still on, one hand on the doorknob, taking in the scene with a calm that made both men instantly wish you had screamed instead. 

Your eyes moved from the open window to the blood on the floor, from the cracked mirror to the broken wardrobe, from the shattered perfume bottle to your ex. Then your eyes moved to Dex, and suddenly the room became very small.

Bucky, who had faced firing squads with more composure, gave you a faint nod. “Hey.”

Dex looked at him like he was going to kill him after all.

You blinked once.

“What,” you said carefully, “am I looking at?”

Dex immediately pointed at Bucky. “He came through the window.”

Bucky’s head snapped toward him. “He hit me in the gunshot wound.”

“You bled on her floor.”

“I was bleeding before I got here.”

You lifted one hand, and both of them stopped.

It was almost embarrassing, the speed of it. Dex shut his mouth so fast his teeth clicked. Bucky went silent too, looking annoyed that he had obeyed at the same time as Dex. 

“My perfume,” you said.

Dex’s face shifted with instant, tragic guilt.

Bucky looked down.

That was the first real victory of the night, apparently. Your perfume bottle, shattered on the floor, managed to frighten them both into shame.

“It was an accident,” Bucky said carefully.

Dex’s head turned toward him very slowly.

Bucky seemed to remember, at the last second, that angering your boyfriend in front of you while bleeding in your bedroom was not a survival strategy. His mouth closed.

You stared at them for another second. Dex stood perfectly still, and. Bucky looked like he wanted to sit down, pass out, and win the argument. Both of them were waiting for your verdict.

Finally, you sighed.

It wasn’t a forgiving sigh. It wasn’t even a tired sigh. It was the sigh of a woman who had left for forty minutes and returned to find her past and present trying to murder each other in her bedroom like unsupervised coyotes.

“Were you followed?” you asked.

Bucky hated that he had to answer that twice.

“No,” Bucky said, straighter now. “‘Was dealing with a hydra cell uptown and you were closer." 

You sighed, as if to say, good. Then, you saw your boyfriend's hand move behind him, and you could only shake your head. “Dex,” you said.

He froze.

“Don’t.”

His hand revealed the weapon, as if making it visible made it any better.

Bucky, apparently determined to survive only by accident, muttered, “Good call.”

Dex smiled without looking at him. “Talk again.”

“Boys!” you snapped.

You stepped into the room at last, carefully avoiding the glass, and looked around with increasing disbelief. The closer you got, the worse it became. There was blood on the dresser, blood on the floor, a dent in the wall, a crack through the mirror, one of your shirts knocked from its hanger and lying in the wreckage like a surrender flag. 

You stopped in front of them, and neither man moved.

You looked at Dex. “Knife.”

He handed it over immediately, handle first.

You looked at Bucky. “Gun.”

Bucky hesitated for half a second.

“I know you have one,” you tilted your head. 

It was then that he pulled it from his hidden holster and gave it to you. Dex’s mouth twitched like he was pleased Bucky had also folded. Bucky saw it and looked like he wanted to bite him.

You took both weapons, set them on the dresser and pressed two fingers to the bridge of your nose.

“I was gone,” you said, very evenly, “for three hours.”

Dex glanced at Bucky. Bucky glanced at Dex.

Both of them seemed to understand, at the exact same time, that blaming each other would technically be honest but also spiritual suicide.

So they said nothing.

That, finally, was smart.

You stared at the two of them for a few seconds longer, then exhaled through your nose like you had to physically, actively choose to protect your peace or whatever.

“I’m going to get water and plate up dinner,” you said, voice calm in a way that made both stand straighter. “Dex. Put Bucky on the bed and stitch him up.”

Dex’s face went blank. Bucky’s did too, but for completely different reasons.

“No,” Dex said before he could stop himself.

You looked at him.

He swallowed, eyes flicking once to Bucky, then to the bed, then back to you with the betrayed eyes of a man being asked to personally tuck a grenade under his pillow. You stepped closer before he could make it worse, cupped his face with one hand, and kissed his cheek.

“Dex,” you frowned, quieter. “Please?”

Oh, you ruined him.

Bucky saw it happen and immediately wished he hadn’t. Dex’s shoulders lowered by a fraction, his mouth tightening around whatever insane argument he had been building, and the affection in him clicked into place so visibly it made Bucky want to look at the floor.

“Fine,” Dex said, like it cost him blood.

Bucky made the mistake of looking amused.

Dex turned to him with murder in his eyes. “Move.”

Bucky looked at the bed, then at the blood on his hand, then back at Dex. “She said put me on the bed. Not throw me.”

Dex grabbed him by the collar before he could say anything else. It was not gentle, but it was careful in the resentful way only he could be. Bucky bit down hard as Dex hauled him upright, metal hand catching the dresser for balance, the strain pulling fresh blood through his fingers. Dex leaned close enough that you couldn’t hear him from the doorway.

“Smile,” Dex murmured, “and I’ll make the stitches uneven.”

Bucky’s expression went carefully blank.

You gave them both one last warning look before leaving for the kitchen. The second your back was turned, the bedroom became awful again. Dex half-carried, half-dragged Bucky to the bed, looking offended by every inch of contact. Bucky tried to help and hated that he couldn’t. When he finally sank onto the edge of the mattress, breathing hard, Dex spread an old towel underneath him with sharp, angry efficiency.

“Don’t get comfortable,” Dex muttered.

Bucky sank onto the edge of the bed, breathing hard. “Believe me, this isn’t my fantasy either.”

Dex, remembering that with the serum, you were still within hearing distance, shut up.

The stitching was silent after that. Dex took his shirt off and worked with clean hands, cutting away ruined fabric, wiping blood from Bucky’s side, pressing gauze down harder than necessary but never hard enough for you to come back in. Bucky could tell every sting was measured. Dex was not losing control; he was choosing exactly how much it hurt.

The first stitch went in neat and mean.

Bucky’s metal hand flexed.

Dex didn’t smile, even though Bucky could tell he wanted to. He kept his head down, eyes focused, fingers steady as he pulled the thread through. Every movement said he knew what he was doing. Every tug said he hated doing it.

“If you tell her you came here because you missed her,” Dex said under his breath, “and I’ll reopen it.”

Bucky stared at the ceiling, breathing through his nose, all the old bitterness dragged out across his face. For once, he didn’t rise to it. Maybe because he was tired. Maybe because you were in the kitchen. 

And when you came back with water and plates, Dex was wiping blood from his thumb with gauze. Bucky was stitched, furious, and silent on your bed.

You looked at the wound, then at Dex.

“Did you make it hurt?” you asked.

Dex paused, and Bucky stared at the ceiling.

Dex wiped blood with a square of gauze and said, very carefully, “A little.”

—

Bucky stayed for dinner because throwing him out with a fresh row of stitches would have made you feel guilty, and because Dex didn't want you to sulk all night.

So the three of you ended up in the living room like the world’s worst domestic painting. You sat cross-legged on the couch with your plate balanced on your knee, trying very hard to pretend there was not a bleeding supersoldier in the armchair and your boyfriend sitting beside you with the posture of a guard dog told not to bite. Bucky had one hand resting carefully near his ribs, still stubbornly upright. Dex sat close enough to your side that his thigh touched yours, his hand loose on your knee, thumb moving once every few minutes like he was reminding himself you were still there and not a hallucination caused by rage.

Dinner lasted seven minutes before it became a crime scene again, just with food.

You had tried. Fuck, you had actually tried. 

For a while, nobody said anything. Dex kept eating in small bites, fist tight enough to crack porcelain. Bucky kept staring at his plate like the noodles had disappointed him. You looked between them, took one bite of rice, and felt your patience leave your body.

“So,” you said, too brightly, because apparently you were determined to suffer. “Are we going to talk about the Hydra cell uptown, or are we all just going to chew angrily until somebody has an aneurysm?”

Bucky grunted.

Dex made a similar sound

You put your fork down. “Thank you both,” you said sarcastically, “Very productive.”

Bucky shifted in the chair and winced before he could hide it. “It’s handled.” which really meant, I wanted to catch up with you but your psychopath boyfriend is in the fucking way.

Dex looked up immediately. “You got shot.”

“And still lost them.”

“You ran here.”

“I came here because it was close.”

“No,” Dex said, his voice going small in the way that meant he had picked a vein and was about to press his thumb into it. “You came here because you knew she’d let you in.”

Bucky’s face hardened.

“I was bleeding.”

“You keep saying that like it makes this less pathetic.”

“Dex,” you warned.

He looked at you at once, and for half a second you saw him try. He really did try. His hand found your knee under the coffee table, not possessive this time but grounding, almost apologetic. Almost, sorry, I can’t help myself. Then Bucky laughed under his breath, one bitter little sound, and Dex’s eyes snapped back to him like a moth finding light.

“What?” Dex asked.

Bucky leaned back, mean with pain. “Nothing. Just funny watching you heel.”

The room went still.

You said, “Bucky.”

But Dex had already smiled.

It wasn’t his good smile. It wasn’t the sweet one he gave you in the kitchen when you kissed the corner of his mouth, not the private little pleased one he did when you called him baby in public. This was unkind and ugly and delighted to have been given permission to be cruel. “That bother you?”

Bucky’s hand tightened around his fork. “No.”

Liar.

“It does.” Dex’s thumb went still on your knee. “You hate that she can tell me to stop and I do.”

Bucky’s jaw flexed. “I hate that you think that makes you good for her.”

You felt yourself sit straighter. “Okay. No. We are not doing this.”

They didn’t hear you, or worse, they heard you and kept going anyway.

Dex leaned forward, elbows on his knees now, all that careful obedience peeling away under jealousy. “Better than disappearing and calling it noble.”

Bucky’s face changed so quickly it almost hurt to watch. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know you left.”

“You know what she told you.”

“I know she doesn’t wake up looking for you anymore.”

That one landed too close too home.

You stood up. “Dex.”

Bucky stood too, or tried to. It was a bad idea. His side pulled, his face went grey, and he had to catch himself on the arm of the chair, but pride dragged him upright anyway. “Say that again.”

Dex rose with him,, one hand already half-reaching for a weapon you had taken from him. “She doesn’t wake up looking for you anymore.”

Your voice came out louder this time. “Enough!”

Bucky laughed, but there was nothing amused in it. “You think you won because you sleep in her bed?”

Dex stepped around the coffee table. “I know I won.”

As if it was ever about winning and not just a pissing contest between two men who cared about you so much, they didn’t know what to do with it half the time.

You moved between them before either of them could take another step,heart hammering with not fear exactly, but it close enough to make you furious. “Both of you shut up. Right now. I mean it.”

For one second, they looked at you. Dex’s eyebrows furrowed when he recognised in panic at your tone. Bucky’s mouth parted like he might actually apologise. Then Dex saw Bucky looking at you, saw the old familiarity there, saw the guilt and grief and care that had no business surviving all these years, and whatever fragile ceasefire you had forced together snapped cleanly in half.

“She’s not your safehouse,” Dex said.

Bucky’s head turned slowly. “Don’t talk about her like she’s a place you own.”

“She is my home.”

“She was mine before she was yours.”

You, by now, had long gone silent.

And not because you had nothing to say. You had too much. It filled your throat all at once, impossible to sort through. You stared at Bucky, then at Dex, and neither of them noticed immediately because they were too far gone. Two trained killers, standing in your living room and turning your life into a battlefield because neither of them knew what to do with the fact that you had existed before and after them.

Dex’s voice rose again first. “She’s not a territory you lost.”

“I was there when it mattered.”

“And where were you after?”

Bucky’s face twisted, souring. “Trying not to ruin her life.”

Dex laughed, loud and cruel now. “How’s that working out?”

They were shouting. Actually shouting now, voices overlapping, old wounds dragged out and thrown at each other like knives. Bucky’s voice was rough from pain and rage. Dex’s was colder, nastier, even when he was losing control. You stood between them for another few seconds, watching their mouths move, watching them say things that were not really about each other at all. They were talking about guilt. About who had failed you better. About who deserved to stand closer.

Then something inside you simply turned… off.

Bucky was saying something about Siberia now, about extraction, about choices made in difficult situations. Dex was throwing back something about staying, about not making abandonment sound like sacrifice. Their voices filled the living room, bouncing off the walls, ugly and masculine and wounded all the same, and you felt suddenly, violently tired. 

Not sad. Not even angry anymore. You were just tired in a way that settled behind your ribs.

You stepped back.

Still, they argued.

You looked at the cold food on the coffee table, at the stain of Bucky’s blood on your rug, at Dex’s split lip, at the two men who would kill for you but apparently could not stop talking over you. Your teeth pressed together until your bones hurt. Then you turned your head slightly toward the hallway, toward the bedroom that still had broken glass on the floor and your perfume drying into the wood.

Dex was the first to notice.

Not because he was calmer, but because some part of him always tracked you, even in the middle of his own worst impulses. His voice cut off mid-sentence. His whole body turned toward you by instinct, anger draining out of his face so quickly it left a hollowness behind.

Bucky kept going for half a second longer. “You don’t know what she—”

Then he stopped too.

At this point, you were not looking at either of them. You were standing very still, arms loose at your sides, face quiet in a way that made Dex look like he had been stabbed. Bucky’s eyes shifted more slowly, anger collapsing into guilt as he realised you had gone somewhere neither of them could follow with volume.

Dex said your name.

You didn't answer.

He took half a step toward you, careful now, all the violence gone from his hands. “Baby.”

“No.”

He froze.

You finally looked at him, and whatever he saw on your face made his mouth close.

“No, babe,” you said, trying to hold it together. “Pretend I’m not here. Go fight.”

Neither of them moved.

You gave a small, humourless nod, like that proved the point. “Right.”

Then you turned and walked toward the second bedroom that had been turned into an office.

Dex followed immediately.

He didn’t even look at Bucky. Dex, who had spent the entire night bristling at him, needling him, measuring him, hating him by default and by choice, didn’t even glance back. The second you walked away, Bucky stopped existing to him. Dex followed you down the hall with panic in his shoulders, saying “baby” once more, quieter this time, like he knew he had broken a thread and didn’t know whether he was allowed to touch it.

Bucky stayed in the living room alone.

For a long while, he stood there with one hand pressed to his side, listening to the muffled sound of Dex behind the office door and the absence of your voice answering him. Then his legs gave out enough that he had to sit back down in the armchair.

For once, he had nothing left to say.

—

Dex followed you into the office like he had been pulled by the throat.

Bucky could have stood up, stolen a weapon, climbed back out the window, or died dramatically on your rug, and Dex wouldn’t have noticed unless you did. You had gone quiet, and that was worse than shouting. 

You went straight to the office, pushed the door open, and stood in the middle of the room with your arms crossed like you had no idea what to do with your own hands. Dex came in behind you and stopped just inside, careful not to crowd you, which made it worse because he was trying so hard. There was dried blood at his lip, and he looked wrecked, keyed-up, guilty, furious, and terrified all at once.

“Baby,” he said.

You laughed once, but there was no humour in it. “Don’t baby me right now.”

He flinched like you had put your hand through his ribs. It made you angry all over again because of course that got to you. Of course the sight of him looking hurt made your own chest tighten, even when you were the one trying not to cry. That was the horrible thing about Dex. He could be violent and possessive and completely out of his mind, but the second you were upset, he went pliant in the most devastating way. Not calm or healthy, and not flinching like panic. He became pliant like worship. Pliant like he would rather tear his own heart out than survive you going cold on him.

You turned away from him, pressing your fingers hard against your eyes. “I am so tired.”

“I know,” he said immediately. “I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

You weren’t convinced, because you knew him, and you knew he would say anything to win you back, no matter the cost. 

“Are you?” you snapped, whirling back on him. “Because you were in there acting like he came here to steal me. He’s bleeding, Dex. He was shot. He came here because he trusted me.”

Dex’s nervous flexed at that, but he swallowed whatever first answer rose in him. You could see it. The jealous monster in him wanted to bite. The boyfriend in him wanted to crawl. The boyfriend won because you were crying now, your breath catching in your throat like you hated yourself for doing it.

Dex walked up to you slowly, like approaching a wounded animal, and lowered himself to his knees in front of you as if it was second nature.

“Don’t,” you said, but your voice cracked.

He looked up at you, hands hovering near your thighs without touching until you let him. “I can’t see you like this,” he said, voice low and ruined. “I can’t. Be mad, yell at me, hit me if you need to, but don’t go quiet. Please don’t go quiet.”

You were never going to hit him, of course, and that broke your heart. 

See, when you two fought, you fought so differently then when you did with Bucky. 

Because with Bucky, when it had been bad, it had always been explosive. The two of you had fought like weather systems, and then one of you would go silent. Sometimes him. Sometimes you. Whole rooms would be left full of things unsaid. You’d spend whole nights spent with your backs to each other.

Dex was not like that.

Sure, before you started dating, when you were just friends with benefits, you’d fight. But now that he had a title he could lose? Dex couldn’t bear distance. He could not sit in another room and wait you out. He didn’t know how to leave anger alone to cool. The idea of you lying awake furious at him while he gave you space would destroy him faster than a bullet. He would beg too early, apologise too fast, kneel before his pride even understood it had lost. He didn’t always understand how to be good, but fuck, he wanted to be good for you so badly it hurt to look at.

You covered your mouth, breath hiccuping.

Dex’s hands settled carefully at your hips. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m sorry I made it worse.”

“He’s my friend,” you said, and the words came out small despite how hard you tried to make them loud. “I care about him. He saved my life, Dex. He pulled me out of that chamber. He was there when I didn’t even know if I was still a person.”

Dex’s face soured, but not with malice. With jealousy he hated and couldn’t smother fast enough.

“I know,” he whispered.

“No, you don’t. You don’t get to make me feel guilty because I care about someone who mattered before you.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You are.” You shoved at his shoulder, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to make his hands fall away. “You are, and I can’t do this. I can’t have you two tearing each other apart every time you’re in the same room. Just get along. Be civil. Be normal for five minutes. Do it for me, you jealous prick.”

Dex blinked up at you. Then, very carefully, he said, “You’re jealous too.”

“Of what, Dex?” You spat. “You’ve never had a girlfriend before me.”

He didn’t say it like a weapon. He said it gently, almost sadly, like he was placing fragile blade between you because pretending not to see it would insult you both.

“Julie,” he said.

You looked away immediately, and that was answer enough.

Dex’s hands moved back to you, palms warm through the fabric of your trousers. “Baby.”

“Don’t.”

“You found out about her and stayed up until three in the morning asking me questions.”

You remembered that night with a humiliating clarity.

It had started so quietly, with you in bed beside Dex, both of you half-dressed and exhausted, his hand warm on your thigh under the blanket while the room sat blue and still around you. You had asked one question about Julie because you thought you could handle one question. Then one became five, then ten, then suddenly it was three in the morning and you were sitting upright with your knees pulled to your chest, crying like a stupid little girl over a dead woman who had never even been your rival.

Dex had looked devastated by it. Not irritated or defensive. Devastated, like your jealousy had hurt you first and him second. He kept trying to pull you back into him, careful and frantic at the same time, one hand cupping the side of your face while the other rubbed slow circles into your hip. “Baby,” he had said, over and over, voice wrecked. “It wasn’t romantic. It was never romantic. I don’t love her like that. I don’t think about her like that. I don’t think about her at all unless you ask me to.”

“But if she was alive,” you had whispered, hating yourself as soon as the words came out. “If she was still here, would you still be with me?”

Dex’s face had gone still in the dark, stunned that you could even ask him something so clear to him. Then he moved closer, both hands on you now, holding you like he could physically keep the thought from hurting you any more than it already had. “Of course,” he said, immediate and absolute. “Of course I would. That’s not even a question. You’re not competing with her. You’re not competing with anyone. I want you. I love you.”

You had cried harder then, because the answer should have fixed it and somehow it didn’t. It only made you feel pathetic, mean, ridiculous. Jealous of a ghost. Jealous of some old, lonely part of Dex that had latched onto the idea of a woman because he hadn’t known what else to do with his moral compass. And Dex, because he loved you, hadn’t made you feel small for it. He had just pulled you into his lap, pressed his mouth to your temple, and held you through every ugly question until you ran out of shame and fell asleep against his chest.

Truly, the two of you were a match made in heaven. Or hell. Definitely somewhere dramatic and poorly supervised.

Your throat tightened. “That was different.”

“I know,” Dex said quickly. Too quickly. “I know it’s different.”

You looked at him, breathing unevenly.

He swallowed, still on his knees in front of you like he was afraid you might pull away if he stopped touching you for even a second. “Julie was a fixation,” he said, voice low, urgent, trying so hard to make it better that he didn’t hear himself making it worse. 

You went still.

Dex kept going for half a second too long, because Dex, when scared, could be frighteningly honest. “Bucky was your boyfriend. He’s alive. He was with you. He knew you. He—”

Your breath hitched.

Dex stopped.

His face changed immediately. The argument drained out of him, all that desperate need to be understood collapsing into horror as he realized what he had just put in your hands. Bucky was alive. Bucky had been real. Bucky had loved you in a way Julie never had with him. Bucky could still walk into your apartment bleeding and make him sit down for dinner.

And Dex had said it like that was a wound he was allowed to press.

“Baby,” he said, softer now. “No. I didn’t mean—”

“You don’t have to remind me,” you whispered, and the shame in your voice made you sound younger than you were. “I know that makes me worse.”

You hated yourself for it sometimes, how Julie’s name had lodged under your skin. She was not an ex. She was not some woman Dex had kissed, loved, lost, and secretly measured you against. Julie was a dead girl Dex had fixated on in a way that did not fit neatly into romance or grief. You could resent a living woman. But Julie was a ghost.

“I can’t help it,” you admitted, tears spilling over before you could stop them. “I know it’s not fair. I know you don’t love her. I know you never loved her like this. But I still—”

Dex rose enough to gather you into him, careful and frantic all at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said into your stomach, arms tight around your waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean.”

You pressed your hands over your face, crying harder because he was right and because you were right and neither of those things fixed anything.

Dex held on like letting go would kill him. “What I meant to say is—,” he said, voice wrecked. “I know what it feels like. I know.”

Your fingers slid into his hair despite yourself.

He turned his face into your touch at once.

“I can’t help it, either,” he whispered.

You looked down at him.

“…But he saved my life.”

That, Dex didn’t have an answer to.

You made a broken little sound, and Dex rose just enough to wrap his arms around your waist. He held you carefully at first, then tighter when you folded into him, his face pressed against your stomach, his breath warm through your shirt. You cried harder then, angry and exhausted and humiliated by how much all of it hurt. Dex shushed you like it hurt him too, one hand rubbing slow circles at your back, the other gripping like.

“And it’s not like he still loves me,” you said into his hair.

Dex was silent for a beat too long.

You pulled back, wet-eyed and furious, knowing he didn’t buy it. “He doesn’t.”

Dex looked up at you with those eyes. “Baby.”

“He doesn’t,” you insisted, even as your voice broke. “And even if he did, I don’t care. I don’t love him that way. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“It is.”

“Then act like it.”

His eyes closed.

You touched his face, thumb brushing just under the blood at his lip, and the anger in you crested and fell despite yourself. “I want you to get along with him.”

Dex opened his eyes again, devastated.

“I know,” you said, before he could argue. “I know you hate it. I know it feels awful. But he’s my friend. He saved my life. He matters to me, and you matter to me, and I am not spending the rest of my life refereeing two guys who both think suffering quietly counts as emotional maturity.”

A faint, miserable twitch crossed Dex’s mouth. “I don’t suffer quietly.”

“No,” you said. “You suffer at me.”

He almost smiled, but then your eyes filled again and it died instantly.

“I’ll try,” he said. 

You looked at him for a long moment, searching his face. Dex let you. 

Dex meant everything when it came to you. Every promise, every apology, every awful possessive impulse, every desperate attempt to be better.

But I’ll try is not I will, now is it? 

You bent down and kissed his forehead. Then, you stepped away.

Dex’s hands fell slowly from your waist. 

You wiped your face with both hands and took a long breath. “I need air.”

His face changed immediately. “I’ll come with you.”

“No.”

Oh.

You walked past him to the office cabinet and pulled open the bottom drawer. Dex watched, confused and wary, as you took out the adamantium handcuffs Charles had given you for your next mission, along with the reinforced rope packed beside them. His eyes narrowed.

“I…,” he said carefully. “What are you doing?”

“Solving my problem.”

You walked back into the living room with Dex following close behind. Bucky was still in the armchair, plate abandoned on the coffee table, one hand pressed to his freshly stitched side. He looked up when you came in, saw your tear-streaked face first, then his gaze dropped to the adamantium cuffs.

His expression went flat. “No.”

“Yes.”

Bucky knew that look. He knew your stupid little get-along strategy because you had done it before, years ago, during the Flag Smashers ordeal, when he and Sam had been pretending not to hate each other so much it became everybody else’s problem. You had locked them in one of Sarah’s spare room, taken the weapons, and told them you didn’t care if they talked, fought, cried, or started a podcast, but they weren’t coming out until they stopped acting like divorced dogs.

Sam had called you messed up, which wasn’t false. Bucky had called you evil, even though he loved you then. Still, it worked.

So yes. He knew exactly what you were about to do.

Dex was a little slower, but not by much. He looked to the cuffs, to Bucky, to the dining chair, then back to your face. 

“Wait,” Dex said.

“Nope.”

Bucky tried to stand. He made it about three inches before pain and blood loss turned the attempt into something embarrassing, his metal hand catching the arm of the chair as his stitched side pulled meanly. Dex, still not fully accepting the plan but loyal to your orbit by instinct, caught him by the shoulder before he could tip sideways. The second he realized he was helping, his face went sour.

You dragged two dining chairs back to back, and pointed “Sit.”

Bucky and Dex stared at you.

You stared back, tear tracks still drying on your cheeks, cuffs hanging from one hand, absolutely done with both of them.

They sat.

It wasn’t elegant. Bucky was injured and annoyed. Dex was baffled and visibly trying to decide whether his obedience extended to being trapped with your ex. Unfortunately for both of them, you were a supersoldier and in absolutely no mood. They both knew you overpowered Dex, and Bucky in this state. So within  a minute, Dex and Bucky were back-to-back on the chairs, wrists locked in adamantium cuffs, rope looped around their torsos for good measure.

Bucky looked over his shoulder as much as he could. “Are you serious?”

Dex tested the cuffs once, then stopped when you looked at him. He said your name, but you didn’t respond. 

You put your coat back on.

Both of them went very still.

“I need some air,” you said, voice raw but steady now. “You better figure out your differences by the time I come back”

Dex’s face went pale with panic. “Baby, please—”

“No.” You grabbed your keys from the bowl. “You two want to fight so badly? Great. Use your words.”

Bucky shifted against the rope and winced. “This feels unnecessary.”

You opened the door. “You two are assassins. Bond.”

That shut him up.

Dex leaned forward as much as the cuffs allowed, eyes fixed on you like the leash had gone too long. “Don’t go far.”

You paused at the doorway, you looked like you were going to say something, but instead, you just closed the door and left. 

Dex stared at the door like he could will it open again, simply because he cannot remember the last time you left the house without a goodbye kiss. Bucky stared at the opposite wall, side aching, wrist cuffed to a man who clearly wanted him dead and loved you too much to move.

Finally, Bucky exhaled.

Dex said, very quietly, “I hate you.”

Bucky closed his eyes. “Yeah. I got that.”

—

For a long time, neither of them spoke.

The silence was not a peaceful one either. It had weight, heavy as blood drying into the rug. 

It felt like some humiliating group therapy exercise designed by a woman who had finally had enough. Neither of them tested the restraints for long. They both knew you. They both knew Charles, Val, and the likes of them. They both knew you hadn’t used anything either of them could break without tearing the chair, their shoulders, or each other apart in the process.

Eventually, Bucky shifted, just enough to take pressure off the stitches in his side.

Dex’s voice cut through the room immediately. “Stop moving.”

Bucky shut his eyes. His shoulders were stiff against Dex’s back, and every shallow breath dragged at the wound, feeling like punishment. “I’m bleeding through stitches because you put them in like you were sewing up a punching bag.”

“You’re alive.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I’m managing.”

Bucky breathed out through his nose, almost a laugh, but the movement pulled at his side and killed the sound before it became anything. The room went silent again, only meaner this time, because the adjustment had brought their backs closer together. Dex could feel the hard line of Bucky’s body against his, even tied down. Bucky could feel the cogmium steel in Dex’s spine, the tension locked through him like he was barely pretending to be human.

“You always treat her like she’s gonna disappear if you blink?” Bucky asked.

It was meant to be an insult. Bucky meant it as a jab at the anxious attachment, the codependency Dex seemed to have with you that Bucky never had. The problem was Dex didn’t see it as a flaw. Loving you meant watching. Loving you meant knowing where the exits were, where your coat was, how long you had been gone, what your voice sounded like when you were about to shut down.

Dex’s mouth hardened. “You would know something about disappearing.”

Bucky’s voice dropped. “You don’t know anything about what happened.”

“I know enough.”

Neither of them could move properly, but for a second, it felt like the fight might restart anyway, like they would throw their weight against the chair until something broke. 

“Why?” Dex asked eventually, forcing the words through.

Bucky said nothing.

Dex’s voice roughened. “Why did you leave her?”

The question didn’t come out of jealousy this time. It came out confused, almost offended, like Dex had found a hole in Bucky’s logic so stupid he couldn’t stop looking at it. He could understand fear. He could understand obsession. He could understand damage, violence, love so consuming it made a person distasteful to everyone except the one person who mattered. What he could not understand was having you in his arms, feeling you settle against his chest, hearing your breathing even out because you trusted him enough to sleep there, and then choosing to leave.

It made no sense to him! When Dex held you, there was nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. No mission, no freedom, no version of himself without you waiting for him. The thought of breaking up with you felt less like a choice and more like suicide. So what the fuck was Bucky’s excuse? How did a man get loved by you and still manage to walk away? Was he stupid? Was he blind? Was he just a fucking dumbass?

Bucky didn’t answer for a long time. When he finally spoke, the words came out flat, like he had scraped all the pride off them first.

“I started my campaign for Congress,” he said. “Sam talked me into it. She tried to talk me out of it. I thought it was the right thing. I thought if I chose office and a stable paycheck, I could take care of her.”

Dex listened unwillingly.

“When I got elected, I told her to stop the vigilante work,” Bucky continued. “Told her it was going to get her killed. She said the job wasn’t me. She said every speech made me look like I was burying myself alive and asking people to clap for it.”

“Was she right?” Dex asked.

Bucky didn’t answer straight away.

He could still remember a particularly bad fight like the back of his hand. 

You were in the kitchen of the old Brooklyn apartment,  one sleeve shoved up because there was blood on your wrist and you had sworn it wasn’t yours. He was still in his campaign shirt, collar open, tie pulled loose, standing between you and a stack of donor notes like any of it had ever belonged to him. You and Bucky had always been fire against fire. There was no Dex-like affection that turned into apology the second your voice cracked. Bucky loved you, but he fought you like someone who expected you to talk back. And you always did.

“You don’t care that it’s dangerous,” you had snapped. “Don’t lie to me, it’s insulting.”

Bucky sighed. “You think I don’t care if you die out there?”

“I think you care that it’s not good for your job,” you shot back, voice rising. “I think you care that future Congressman Barnes can’t have a girlfriend coming home with blood in her pretty little dress because it isn’t good enough for the cameras. It doesn’t fit the nice little “reformation” story they’re trying to sell about you.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Is it?” you demanded. “Because you didn’t have a problem with what I did when we were both in the mud. Now you’re wearing a suit and smiling for donors, and suddenly I’m the problem?”

“I’m trying to build something,” Bucky shouted back. “For us.”

“No,” you said, and your voice broke because you wanted so badly for him to understand. “You’re trying to make us presentable.”

You gripped the marble, then you shoved his speech draft off the counter and the papers scattered across the floor like the whole campaign had finally become as ridiculous as it felt.

“You hate this,” you said, furious and crying now, which only made you angrier. “You hate the speeches. You hate the cameras. And you want me to stop fighting because if I stop, maybe you can pretend you stopped too.”

“That’s not what this is.”

“That is exactly what this is.”

“You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“And you’re going to stand behind a podium and call that living?” you threw back, stepping closer, close enough that he could see the tears caught on your lashes. “I can’t stand there pretend this is your passion. Watching you do this is breaking my fucking heart.”

Really, maybe that had been the cruelest truth. You were different people by then, or maybe you had finally stopped pretending you weren’t. Bucky wanted peace so badly he was willing to sacrifice his life’s calling. You wanted him alive, but not hollowed out. 

It was never going to work out after that. 

“Yeah,” he said finally. “She was right.”

Bucky’s jaw flexed. “Yeah.”

Dex had expected a speech, maybe some self-righteous old-soldier bullshit about duty and sacrifice. Instead, Bucky just said it plainly, but Dex should’ve expected it. Of course you had been right. 

“She just had to scratch the itch,” Bucky said. “That’s what I thought then. I hated that I was trying to build something for her and she still didn’t want me in office. I hate the she didn’t want the life I thought I was making safe.”

Dex swallowed once, staring at the floor.

“I left,” Bucky said. His voice had gone lower now, stripped of rage and charm and anything that might make him sound better than he was. “Because I thought if I stayed, I’d start hating her for not becoming the person I needed her to be. And I thought she’d start hating me for asking her to change.”

Bucky’s shame sat heavily in the room. 

“So you were a coward,” Dex said, like it was the only possible conclusion.

“Yeah.”

Dex pictured you angry and exhausted, standing in front of a man in a suit who wanted peace so badly he tried to make you stop being who you were. “You had her,” Dex said. “And you left.”

Bucky tipped his head back against the chair. “Yeah.”

“She’s perfect.”

“She’s not,” Bucky said.

Dex went rigid. If he could throw something at him, he would’ve.

Bucky felt it immediately and exhaled, tired and pained. “I don’t mean it like that.”

“Then say it right.”

“She’s reckless,” Bucky said. “She’s brutal and she’s never been good at pulling her punches. She gets a goal in her head and won’t let it go even if it ruins her. She’s not perfect.”

Dex knew every word was true, and hated that Bucky knew it too.

Bucky’s voice lowered, “But she is. Somehow.”

Dex looked down at the cuffs around his wrists.

“By the time I figured out she was right about congress, it was too late,” Bucky said. “She didn’t want me back.”

Dex frowned. “What?”

“You didn’t know?”

Dex said nothing.

Bucky made a quiet, bitter sound. “She didn’t tell you.”

Dex hated the words before he even understood why. “Tell me what?”

“After I joined the New Avengers, I went back to her place,” Bucky said. “I brought flowers, gave her a speech about how I never should’ve run for office.”

Dex’s mouth twitched despite himself. “Flowers?”

“Shut up.”

“She hates being surprised with flowers after a fight. She says it feels like a cop-out.”

“I know that now.”

Dex went quiet again.

“I told her I loved her,” Bucky said. His voice was rougher now. “Told her I was wrong. Told her I should have listened. Told her I wanted to try again. I thought if I admitted it, maybe there was still something to save.”

Dex’s breathing slowed.

“She let me talk,” Bucky said. “Then she said she loved me—”

Dex tensed before he could stop himself.

Bucky felt it and didn’t comment. He forced himself to come out the rest of the sentence instead. “She said she loved me, but not in the same way anymore. Said she couldn’t go through the same heartbreak twice. She said if she let me back in, she’d spend every day waiting for me to decide I knew better than her again.”

Dex stared at the door.

“Then she told me to go home,” Bucky said.

Oh.

Dex didn’t know what he had expected. Maybe some part of him had always imagined Bucky as a door you had left open, a threat waiting to happen, a man who could come back and claim you by knowing the right scars. But that was not what this was. 

“You still love her,” he said.

Bucky didn’t answer quickly enough.

Dex’s teth tightened. “Don’t lie.”

Bucky looked at the wall. “Yeah.”

Dex’s voice went cold. “Then why are you sitting here pretending this visit was anything but wanting to see her again?”

Dex knew the Avengers Tower was not that far. If Bucky had wanted medical care, if he had wanted backup, he could have gone there. But he had come here, because the wound gave him an excuse to reach for the one person he was not supposed to want anymore.

“I’m not pretending anything,” Bucky said.

“You want her.”

“I don’t get to want her.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

Dex turned his face away, nostrils flaring once. He hated him. He still hated him. Maybe more now, because Bucky’s love was not clear enough to dismiss and not active enough to fight. 

“She’s happier with you anyway,” Bucky said.

Dex froze.

It sounded like it hurt Bucky to say that. He wasn’t being generous. He sounded almost angry, like your happiness had betrayed him by proving him unnecessary.

“She’s more relaxed,” Bucky said. “Even tonight. When you looked at her, yeah, she looked tired. Pissed off. Ready to kill both of us. But she looked… here. Like this is her life now. She doesn’t want to run away from this the way she wanted to run away from me.”

Dex didn’t move.

Bucky swallowed. “I think I loved her for the person she could be.”

Dex’s throat tightened.

“You love her as she is,” Bucky said, voice low with the humiliation of telling the truth to a man he still disliked. “You love the part of her I kept trying to talk down. You love her because she is who she is.”

Dex stared at nothing.

“Fuck,” Bucky managed a scraping laugh. “You’re perfect for each other.”

For once, Dex had no insult ready. He just sat there, back pressed to the man who had once loved you badly and still loved you enough to tell the truth.

You love her as she is.

Oh.

Of course he had known he loved you. His love for you was the central fact of his life now. But he had never heard it put like that. He had never understood that the thing Bucky had failed to survive was the exact thing Dex held onto with both hands.

He loved you now. As you were. Bloody, stubborn, brilliant. Too much, and yet never enough to scare him away.

Bucky shifted behind him and winced. “Don’t make that face.”

Dex blinked. “You can’t see my face.”

“I can feel it. It’s probably disturbing.”

Dex’s mouth tightened, but the bite was weaker now. “I still hate you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you near her.”

“I know that too.”

“But she wants you alive,” Dex said, the words dragging out of him like a confession he resented. “And she wants you in her life.”

Bucky was quiet.

Dex shook his head. “So don’t make me regret not killing you.”

Bucky looked down at his bound hands, then toward the door you had walked out of. “I’m not trying to take her from you.”

Dex listened for the lie.

There was love, grief, want, regret. But not a plan. Not a claim.

“I know,” Dex said finally.

The silence after that was still uncomfortable. They were still tied together, still angry, still would probably never like each other, but the hatred had less room to move now. In its place was a human recognition that they had both loved you, and one of them had loved what you might become, while the other was waiting for you to come home exactly as you were.

Bucky tipped his head back, exhausted. “She’s going to be mad I said all that.”

Dex looked at the door. “I won’t tell her.”

Bucky turned his head slightly. “Why?”

“Because it would hurt her.”

Bucky sighed and said, “Good.”

Dex’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t approve of me.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You were.”

Bucky almost smiled, then thought better of it because his side hurt and because Dex would probably take it personally. “Fine.”

They sat there in silence again, still waiting for your key in the door.

It was not peaceful, but it was kinder than before. The fight had burned down, leaving only the uncomfortable knowledge that you had been right to leave them there.

Eventually, Bucky shifted, careful of his stitches. “We’re supposed to get along, right?”

Dex stared at the front door. “I don’t want to.”

“Neither do I.”

Bucky exhaled through his nose. “Find one thing, then. One thing we don’t hate about each other. That’s probably what she wanted.”

Dex’s mouth tightened. “That’s a stupid strategy.”

“It worked on me and Sam.”

“I’m not Sam.”

“No,” Bucky said dryly. “You’re much worse.”

Dex almost answered. He almost gave him a mean enough comment to make the room normal again. Instead, he stayed quiet for so long Bucky thought he was refusing the whole thing on principle. 

Then, Dex looked down and said, like the words had to be dragged out of him, “I admired you.”

Bucky went still.

“In the military,” Dex continued. “They taught us about the original hotshot World War Two sniper.” He sighed, recounting what he learned. “You were a benchmark.”

Bucky looked down at his metal hand.

For a second, the living room felt very far away. He was back France, younger, with a rifle settled against his shoulder and Steve’s voice behind him. He remembered having hands that felt like his. He remembered trusting the weapon without thinking about it. He remembered the  awful focus of a target through glass.

“Not anymore,” Bucky said.

Dex turned his head slightly, as much as the rope allowed.

Bucky flexed his metal fingers once. “My hands got too heavy.”

Dex didn’t offer pity, which was maybe the first decent thing he had done all night. He just sat with it, understanding the mechanics before the grief: hands were tools. Bodies were weapons. And sometimes the weapon changed and everyone still expected you to aim the same.

“You compensate,” Dex said eventually, “You’re still good.”

Bucky’s mouth twitched upwards. “That your version of comfort?”

“It’s an observation.”

“Right.” Bucky breathed out something close to a laugh, then stopped when his side pulled.

After a moment, Bucky said, “You’re good too.”

Dex’s eyes narrowed. “I know.”

Bucky rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Jesus.”

And just like that, there was recognition, only because lying would be disrespectful. They sat there with it, no longer pretending there was nothing in the other worth understanding.

Dex looked toward the door again.

“She’ll be cold,” he said.

Bucky’s eyes before he could stop it. “Yeah. She always says she won’t be.”

“She’d be lying.”

Bucky didn’t argue. For once, there was nothing to argue with. They both knew that about you: the stubborn little tilt of your chin, the way you would rather freeze than admit you wanted anyone to notice, the way you made needing care look like a personal failure. 

Dex stared at the floor, hating that Bucky knew things like that. But under the hatred, there was one truth Dex couldn’t make himself resent: you were alive because of him.

So, very quietly, he said, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you pulled her out of that cryo chamber.”

The words landed harder, maybe because Dex meant them. Maybe because Bucky knew what it cost him to say it. Maybe because for a moment, all the hatred in the room had to make space for the fact that they both loved you enough to be grateful you had survived.

Bucky breathed in once, and did not trust himself to answer.

Neither of them spoke after that.

There was nothing left to say that would not make both of them feel worse.

—

When you came back, they were free.

For a second, you just stood there with your key still in the lock, cold air slipping in around your legs, staring into your own living room like it had rearranged itself while you were gone. The chair was empty. The rope had been loosened and coiled beside it. The adamantium cuffs sat neatly on the coffee table, gleaming under the lamp like evidence at a trial.

Bucky was standing near the armchair, pale but upright, one hand resting carefully over his stitched side. Dex was by the window with his arms crossed, his split mouth set in a hard little line, watching you with an expression so forcibly neutral it immediately made you suspicious.

You blinked.

“Uh.”

Neither of them moved.

You pointed slowly at the chair. “Did I not leave you two tied up?”

Bucky looked faintly embarrassed. Dex looked like he had been waiting for this question and still hated having to answer it.

“We worked together,” Bucky said.

Dex glanced to him. “He needed to piss. I wasn’t letting him do it on our floor.”

That was apparently the whole explanation.

Huh.

The apartment was kind of clean now. 

Even the bedroom, somehow, was as clean as it could be. The mirror was still cracked, the door still needed dealing with, and the ghost of your perfume still clung to the floorboards, but the blood had been wiped up, the glass swept away, the sheets changed, the ruined towel folded in the dirty laundry. Apparently, at some point between being handcuffed to the same chair and deciding not to murder each other, Dex had made Bucky help him clean.

Still, nobody was shouting. Nobody was bleeding more than they already had been. Nobody was dead.

The bar, unfortunately, was on the floor.

At one point, Bucky said he should go.

You nodded, but when he moved toward the door, you caught his sleeve before he passed you and drew him into a hug. He went still at first, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to have that anymore. Then his arm came around you, gentle and familiar, his hand flatwarm between your shoulders.

“We’ll catch up,” you said quietly.

Bucky’s eyes closed for half a second. “Yeah,” he murmured. “We will.”

Across the room, Dex froze in a way that was technically progress because it was not murder.

His eyes fixed on Bucky’s hand on your back. Then on your cheek pressed briefly to Bucky’s shoulder. Then on the relaxed expression in Bucky’s face when he looked down at you. Dex’s jaw clicked once, twice, and you could practically feel the jealousy being dragged through his body by a leash made of your name.

He lasted exactly three seconds.

“Yeah, okay,” Dex said, voice tight. “That’s too long. Get off her.”

You looked at him over Bucky’s shoulder.

Dex’s mouth shut, but his eyes stayed huge and miserable, like a dog ordered not to bite while the mailman danced in front of him.

Bucky, because he valued his life a little more now than he had earlier, released you first. He looked at Dex once. Dex looked back, less murderous than before, but still with the promise that Bucky was alive on a technicality.

Bucky was alive because you didn’t want him dead. 

Bucky left after that, limping only a little, dignity held together by stitches. The door closed behind him, and the apartment went quiet.

You stood there for a second, coat still on, shoulders finally sinking now that there was no one left to manage. Dex stayed where he was then crossed walked towards you slowly. 

He looked at you with those wide, wounded eyes, and swallowed.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said.

Your anger thinned at the edges despite yourself.

He looked at you like that mattered. Like not killing Bucky had cost him real effort, real restraint. Like he wanted you to see that he had done it for you. Only for you.

You sighed, then reached up and touched his cheek.

“I’m proud of you, baby.”

Dex’s eyes gentled immediately.

“So proud,” you murmured, thumb brushing carefully near the blood at his lip. “My good boy didn’t murder my friend.”

His breath hitched, just a little.

“You’re making fun of me,” he said, but his voice had gone warm.

You sighed with a slightly amused smile. “A little.”

Dex leaned into your palm anyway.

You stepped closer, and that was all it took. His restraint broke as he wrapped his arms around you like he had been starving for permission all night, pulling you carefully into his chest, careful of his bruises, and even more careful of yours that you gained from your last mission. He tucked his face into your hair, his hands spread firm over your back, and for the first time since you had opened the door and found blood on your floor, he let himself breathe properly.

For the first time all night, he felt good about himself.

He wasn’t normal of course, whatever that meant. He was never going to be suddenly reasonable about Bucky Barnes existing within a five-mile radius of you. But good, because you were in his arms and you had called him baby and Bucky was alive and somehow Dex had managed to give you that. He had behaved. Barely, maybe, but barely still counted.

He kissed you then, carefully, like he was asking whether he was still allowed. When you kissed him back, his arms tightened around you, warm and helpless. The apartment still smelled faintly like antiseptic and takeout and broken glass. But you were kissing him, and your hands were on his face, and behind his skull, Bucky’s voice echoed again:

Perfect for each other.

Dex smiled into your mouth.

Yeah.

He could live with that.

—end.

Extra Note: Lowkey should I make this into a miniseries??? I love writing their dynamic so much. 

Dex taglist : @itsdynotdaddy @diabolicallydownbad @doesanyonereadthis @meicore @pixie2k5 @bibiishin @starlitflora @pearlstiare @glorybeat @stardustworlds @castawaybarnes @supervampireflame @not-the-teen-witch @billybonesxx @ultimatewolverine @treetrees-world-of-imagiation @bitch-spaghetti-o @lostinthes4uce @cotton-eee @weallhaveadestiny @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce @moonbug333 @yujyujj @mattdexx @lostfallenangelsblog @bloomsberryfairy @flimsysquid @abbotfan @leonetta2014 @ficcharsimpsblog @odairtrqsh @ugh-whytho @noonenuts @akiyhara @genya1617 @itzrachel04 @avidreader73 @quicksilver21 @lmg-stilinski24 @magnificentlymoltenpatron @natalia42069 @eaumyth @hxdxs @cemeterystardust @alligatortears87 @outpostsworld @scarlet48 @erina00 @tragicgirl23

And today is just one of those days. He’d spent the night tossing and turning, trying to massage away a kink in his neck that persisted well into the afternoon. But he hadn’t had time to complain or think too much about how excited he was to crawl back beneath the sheets, because the northernmost barn was falling to pieces. 

So, not only was he functioning half empty from the start, but the work today was also strenuous. Sawing raw timber to the perfect length, sanding down the sharp edges, hammering nails into plywood. A full day. 

And when Denise had stopped him on his way home, waving him down with a glass of freshly squeezed lemonade in hand, she’d given him that bright, hopeful smile and said, “Little Sammy ran that damn bike into the back door again. Would you mind fixing the hinges?”

His back ached and his knees were creaky, but Joel soon found himself knelt on Denise’s porch, screwdriver and fresh nails in hand.

It didn’t take long, but it did take every last scrap of energy that remained inside of him.

Joel’s house was always quiet. Too big for him, really. Ellie was in the garage already, lights still on, up too late when she had early patrol the following morning. But Joel didn’t have it in him to remind her how important sleep was. Not when he was running on fumes himself.

So he dragged those tired, old bones inside. Kicked off his boots and jeans right at the door of his room, hung his flannel over the back of the chair at his work bench, and let out a long sigh as he climbed beneath icy cotton sheets.

He’s half asleep, eyes closed and muscles sinking into the mattress, when he hears it. 

The click of the latch on the unlocked front door. The creak of your careful steps as you climb the stairs.

Joel feels you before he sees you. Too exhausted to pull himself out of blissful almost-sleep. The mattress dips beneath your weight, limbs outstretched, seeking him out of instinct. 

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Not the first time you’ve found yourself peering out of your window next door waiting for him to get home. Not the first time you’ve ended up in his bed or in his arms.

And Joel knows he should put a stop to it—you’re too young, too sweet, too…good. 

But he’s too worn out to fight his impulses. He’s tried for months to keep his thoughts pure when you cross his mind, but it’s been a losing battle from the start.

Especially when you’re like this. Warm and soft, pressed up against his side, wearing an old t-shirt he’d let you borrow the night before and not much else. A comfort that feels more like home than this house does.

The tips of your fingers tickle his forearm, rousing him just enough that he lifts the heavy limb so you can crawl right into his embrace.

Joel holds you tight. He always does. Biceps big and strong around your shoulders. He holds you like he might lose you tomorrow, because there’s a part of him that fears one day you’ll wake up and see something you don’t like. 

He worries you’ll begin to see him for what he is; old, weary, tired. Not even half the man he used to be. Not half the man you deserve.

But for tonight at least, you still wear those rose tinted glasses. Pressing sweet kisses to his face; his nose, his forehead, his cheeks. Nuzzling your face into the crook of his neck, making cute, whiny noises at the back of your throat. Like you’re desperate, unable to get close enough despite every inch being pressed against him, leg hooked over his hips. 

You find a comfortable position and still beside him, letting out the same sort of long sigh Joel did just moments ago. But you don’t sleep—your breathing doesn’t even out, your muscles don’t go slack. 

Joel knows what you need. Long before your hips tilt, before you press your center against his thigh, before you whisper his name in the dark. 

“S’okay, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice deep and dark and sleepy. “C’mere.”

He reaches over and brackets his arm around your waist to drag you on top of him, your center already warm and wanting.

It’s starting to get out of hand, he knows. Starting to become a routine. But Joel doesn’t have many sweet thing in his life, not anymore, and he finds you near impossible to resist. “I’ve got you,” he says. “Take what ya need.”

You lay against his chest, ear pressed right over his heart. Joel kisses the crown of your head when your hips begin to tilt, rubbing yourself against the steadily growing bulge beneath the thin fabric of his boxers.

Soft, wanton sighs leave you at the sensation, and even with a barrier still between you he can feel your clit pulse against the underside of his cock. 

Needy little thing you are. But Joel doesn’t mind—he likes the feeling. Of being needed, wanted. Especially by a girl as sweet as you.

You grind on top of him for a while. Not seeking release, not yet. Just feeling the hard warmth of him beneath you, savoring the weight of his big hands stroking softly up and down the expanse of your back. 

He can feel your arousal growing with each pass, wetness slowly seeping through his boxers, slick and sticky. Joel nudges you gently with the tip of his nose, the prickly hairs of his mustache tickling the side of your face. “C’mon, sweet girl. Let’s get this shirt off, hm?”

When you nod, you pull yourself up tiredly. The movement is slow and thick like molasses, so Joel uses the last of his energy to help you. 

His hands find the hem of the oversized t-shirt and pull it upwards, over your head to be discarded on the floor beside his bed. It leaves you completely naked, bared for him in more ways than one. 

In an instant, you fall back against him, breasts pressed up against his chest. Your skin feels cool against his, smooth and pillowy. “S’warm,” you mutter, rubbing the side of your cheek against the coarse hair that litters his chest, graying in some places.

Joel’s cock throbs beneath you, but he doesn’t pay it any mind. He just lets you settle back down and allows you to rest. His hands wander, though, the way they always do. 

Sliding down your back, over the sides of your thighs, thumbs massaging gentle circles. He strokes his fingers gently back up to your shoulders and then brings them down your arms, smiling when he sees goosebumps rise in his wake.

When they settle back at your hips, his touch is a little more eager. Kneading at the softness, inching over the curve of your ass until that’s all his hands are filled with. 

Joel loves touching you. Not just suggestively, but intimately. He loves feeling the closeness and the trust you put in him to take care of you, to keep you safe, to make you feel good.

He massages the supple flesh, holding you close, until his need for you begins to grow teeth, gnawing at his psyche. 

Joel knows he shouldn’t. He knows that. 

But he’s just so tired, and you’re so soft. Gentle and kind. And you make him feel loved—something Joel Miller has not felt for a very, very long time.

He guides you with his hands gripping at your curves, sliding your slick cunt over his aching cock. His breath feels hollow, stuck in his lungs.

When he lifts upward, just a little, enough to provide a little extra pressure, you mewl in response. 

Joel is quick to soothe, shushing softly into your ear. “Shh, you’re alright. Hang on, sweet girl. M’right here.”

He knows what you need. It’s become a nightly ritual at this point. You come to him seeking connection, seeking the comfort of an older man. Most nights you just need to be held, to be nurtured, to be loved the way you deserve. 

But other nights, Joel knows you need a little more. A connection that runs a little deeper.

He reaches beneath you, hooking his thumbs in the elastic band of his boxers and tugging them down his tired legs. Just enough to free his cock, already hard as stone just from your proximity. 

Joel pulls your forward, up his torso, giving himself room to line his length up with your entrance.

He slides in real easy.

You’re already soaked, dripping with arousal. And the moment he’s fully seated inside you, stretching you real wide, filling up your belly, you let out a breathy whine.

It feels right, being here like this with you. It feels like coming home. 

Joel moves you slowly, guiding each roll of your hips, slowing you down when you try to pick up the pace. 

There’s no rush. Not here, not with him. He’ll get you there. He’ll get you what you need. What’s the sense in hurrying through it? 

He wants to savor it. The feel of your sweet, soft pussy, clenching and leaking around his length. The way your stuttering breath tickles his skin. The way your hands grip him harder and harder, holding him impossibly closer.

He wants to savor the way you love him. 

“Gimme a kiss, baby,” he whispers in the dark.

You turn your head, just enough so that he can press his lips to yours. In this, too, Joel moves painfully slow.

It’s not a claiming, it’s an exploration. His lips move against yours, memorizing the feel of them, the shape and the taste. He slowly licks into your mouth, tongue gliding against yours, breathing in your exhalation. 

The building coil around his spine is anything but slow, however. He loves being here with you maybe a little too much. He loves you a little too much. 

Joel thrust upwards, keeping a steady, unforgiving rhythm while he slides his hand between you. His fingers search blindly for your clit and he finds it in seconds, circling those slow, tight circles around the pulsing nerves. 

Your sounds grow louder, release building. The sound of your joining echoes in the empty room, slick and wet and feverish.

He knows your close when you start manually breathing—lungs stuttering, chasing the delicious relief that only he can provide.

“You got it,” he encourages. “S’right there, baby. Give it to me.”

Your eyes stay locked to his, lips parting on a jagged moan. You don’t say anything; no warning, no begging. You just feel it, feel him, moving deep inside you, fucking you through it. 

“That’s it,” he says, voice all soft and warm the way it only ever is when he speaks to you. “There you go.”

He doesn’t stop until you find the natural rhythm of oxygen again, until the shaking in your thighs relents to an easy tremble. 

Joel feels that white-hot coil beginning to spool within himself, and pulls out of you with just enough time to shoot thick ropes of cum over your pubic bone.

He thrusts the underside of his cock through your syrupy folds, a gentle rocking until he’s spent. He somehow finds the energy for a few extra thrusts, smearing his release over your clit.

You don’t move an inch, and Joel doesn’t want you to.

Instead, you just lay there on top of him, sticky mess between you, your head resting delicately on his chest. 

When you reach up to card your fingers through his graying hair, Joel feels his muscles go completely slack, tension bleeding from his weary bones.

“M’sorry I woke you up,” you say, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “I know you were tired.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Joel says, and he means it. “I’ll always have time for you."

He’s got you cornered in his office, literally, with an arm pressed against the wall above you. John starts to speak of how he wants to be clear about his intentions, and you’ve got to stop him before you kiss his wonderful face that’s creeping closer and closer to yours.

“Captain Price, what about your wife?!” you blurt out, keeping your hands glued to your sides and to yourself.

John pauses, but he looks more amused than guilty. “Is that what all this has been about?” he asks with a chuckle. You get about five words into your practiced speech on how infidelity is unacceptable to you on any level when he drops a bomb on your whole scenario. “I’m not married.”

You’re floored with this new information, eyes wide and mouth agape. “W-what? But I heard you tell the others about your missus and–”

“I was referring to you, sweetheart,” he declares. Your jaw snaps shut at the interruption, and your face heats up as you start processing what this all means. “Glad we're on the same page when it comes to loyalty, though.”

You’re mortified, of course, but at least you’ve hit rock bottom with your dignity already, so it’s not much more of a stretch to next very timidly and quietly request that he place you on top of his desk. John happily obliges. Anything for his little missus.